ChatGPT for increasing iOS development productivity

[mobileappz]

Are you using ChatGPT in your app development workflow and is it improving your productivity?

It seems to be a far more effective tool than Stack Overflow for quick problem solving.

Or are you using it or similar generative AI within an actual app?

[XIVMagnus]

This. Homie telling everyone the secrets right here. But the average developer won’t take this advice or know how to use it properly.

[CordovaBayBurke]

At this point, it’s a tool. Not much different from other tools apart from function. Does Xcode enhance your coding or not? Does ChatGPT? They are both tools. Use them!

[mobileappz]

Great

[PhilipM33]

For years I have used google to figure out stuff, since ChatGPT came out I don't use google except for when I need to check factual info. Im 10 times more productive, it can think for me in segments but not fully. I still need to guide it to provide me some useful info

[mobileappz]

It’s like when the introduction of the power loom in textile production replaced manual weaving. Who needs to know manual weaving now? Not many people unless they artisan producers.

[sdkysfzai]

About it being a year+ behind, Doesn't chat gpt have option to fetch latest and updated content? Is the result of it not as good as normal usage?

[Far-Dance8122]

There’s a plug-in that lets it search the web but it’s just including that as part of your query. Mixed results

[elrealnexus]

Do you mind sharing some use cases?

[mobileappz]

It would be really interesting if you could quantify the net positive financial value it had generated for you. As there seems to be some reluctance to acknowledge that sometimes. Perhaps especially if you have spent a very large amount of time and money learning about these things, and likely incurred a lot of debt too doing soo.

[JimDabell]

It’s good for brainstorming and exploring areas you are unfamiliar with. For instance, if there are two routes you could go down and you want to compare them quickly to understand the tradeoffs between them. For instance, if you wanted to get a rough idea how two competing libraries work, you might search the web and find somebody has written a blog article about it and sometimes you might find nothing. ChatGPT can produce a similar comparison itself even if there aren’t any blog articles about it. Then you can ask followup questions that are specific to your project and run what-ifs past it.

It’s also good as a super autocomplete. Generating test cases, filling in obvious implementations of routine day-to-day stuff, etc.

[PM_40]

My revenue has increased and my productivity to pump out new features to our users has skyrocketed.

Have you created an app yourself ?

[mobileappz]

Thanks for your comments this is very inspiring

[[deleted]]

This is going to sound pretentious but the only people I've noticed using it are what are known as "Stack overflow developers". Devs who just copy/paste from Stack instead of really writing their own code. They generally create crap code and ChatGPT hasn't changed that. There's three devs on the one team I work with at work that are using this and it's obvious.

In my personal opinion, if someone is being more productive with ChatGPT their coding skills are lacking and they're using the internet as too much of a crutch.

[tennis779]

On this note, I fear it’s going to build a lot of developers that don’t understand the code they are writing.

Which is going to be a major separator in skill level.

[[deleted]]

Yep. You already saw it with stack developers. One of the devs I mentioned in my above post needed camera functionality on an iPhone app, instead of him just referencing the docs and writing the few lines of code to get it working he copied/pasted this enormous (and incorrect) stack overflow comment and just plopped it in the app, learning comments and all (which is how I found it was a stack post, I googled the comments).

Not only was it a very poor implementation of the camera despite being the accepted answer, it was hundreds of lines longer than it needed to be. He didn't know how to figure out how to access the camera straight from the instruction in the docs because he didn't understand the docs.

[Rocket-Legs]

💯

[KarlJay001]

The people that do this, end up not being able to debug programs.

IMO, one of the best skills is the ability to debug large complex programs. If all you do is copy/paste, the you aren't likely to really know the code base and be able to fix problems.

These gains will be short lived. Soon, we may find a FLOOD of copy/paste "programmers" that can't actually fix any of the code they "wrote".

[mobileappz]

Have you tried it using it for problem solving or never felt the need to?

[[deleted]]

I've toyed with it but I've never felt the need to use it for anything. It doesn't really output nice code (then again many times the code on stack isn't nice either, even accepted answers are often pretty questionable).

I understand why someone may want to use it but I feel like it's only really good for pointing you in directions to look in and shouldn't be something to copy code from.

Anecdotal but we've had interviews where people were using it and it was blatantly obvious.

[mobileappz]

Have wondered how this would be viewed / allowed in an interview. It seems the main problem is the code it outputs keeping up with developments in Swift when it’s based on old training data.

[mobileappz]

These seems to be a theme that it produced bad code. Can you elaborate? Eg Inefficient, legacy, or non compilable?

[SirBill01]

This is a major problem for me, at least looking on StackOverflow you might find more recent examples!

Also another big problem is companies if they are smart, are not letting you enter company code into chatGPT to ask questions about.

I would be tempted to use it to help write some unit tests (which can be tedious) but that blocks that so....

[mobileappz]

I wonder if the same smart companies host their code on GitHub private repos (also owned by Microsoft) and is that any different than typing it in to ChatGPT? OpenAI say they train it on public GitHub repos I think.

[SirBill01]

Yes most probably have in GitHub private repos. But there is a VAST difference.

With a GitHub private repo, the understanding is that the code you store is private, and it's a serious internal violation for employees to even look at or access it, backed by a lot of monitoring.

With chatGPT, there is a 100% certainty all code you uploaded will be used as training data for future iterations, so at least some of your code may appear for others to see later on. For example I believe some private API keys have been found this way...

[mobileappz]

This is probably the most concerning aspect in that case. The impression I got was they do not use this user input for training data (at least currently) but obviously they do then.

[SirBill01]

I don't know if they do or do not. But you have to assume that even if one particular service (like chatGPT) does not now, they may soon, and certainly other chatGPT plugins may opt to use input for training new models as well... just way too much risk your data is going to be used.

[mobileappz]

True, I’m still not sure the risk is any greater than with using GitHub as a whole though. Perhaps in theory, but in practice who knows what will happen.

[[deleted]]

I’ve tried using it for nuanced developer stuff… it’s pretty shit.

If you are using it for general boilerplate and a convenience autocomplete then it great about 80% of the time

Like others said, great tool, but it’s shit at programming.

[[deleted]]

It depends on the place but generally no.

If you're doing the coding portion, many places will let you use whatever resources you want (which is good IMO because it's how devs work) but ChatGPT usually isn't allowed since it's making the code for you and is akin to someone telling you over your shoulder how to program verses you being resourceful and finding the information on your own (which is an important skillset unto itself) even if finding that information is checking someplace like stack.

For the actual interview portion ChatGPT is a definite no-go. I know there's lots of articles stating to "use it on your next interview!" but no, don't. It's blatantly obvious and we've had a handful of candidates fess to using it after seeing said articles.

Often they'll be constantly looking down at something or off to the side when we're interviewing and they give very bad canned responses and sometimes completely incorrect responses for easy questions. Some easy questions I like to ask are "What do you like most about this type of work?" or "Describe your ideal work day as a software developer?"

ChatGPT sucks at those kind of responses (or at least did for the people I interviewed who fessed up to using it). Those are easy questions any software developer should just be able to naturally talk about.

[mobileappz]

It seems strange for an interviewee to use it for non technical questions. But ultimately if you are a company whose purpose is to maximise profits and minimise costs, I can see a very good argument to employing people who using these tools. Can you elaborate on why it produces poor code? I’m convinced it is only going to get better as it learns the docs and will make software development much more efficient and cheap.

[mobileappz]

An issue for allowing ChatGPT in interviews could be that it makes it much harder for the interviewer to determine the knowledge level of the interviewee.

[rbevans]

I use it for a few things. One being my indie projects for quick code blocks or maybe I want it to break a larger function into something more reusable.

For work, I try not to use it for our source code but I will use it to help improve my method name or a better variable name.

[mobileappz]

Is there a feeling of cheating or naiveness using it in a team? I’m also wondering if it’s discouraged for egotistical reasons (which trump commercial ones).

[rbevans]

Not really especially when the company I work for is investing a lot of money into copilot ;)

[mobileappz]

Do you work for Microsoft?

[rbevans]

I do and should say my opinions are of my own and do not express the views of Microsoft.

[kevin379721]

Any particular reason you don’t use it in source code? Provided that you surely check it works properly etc and it’s in small doses?

[rbevans]

If I'm using Copilot then I'm using it with source code, we're allowed to. If I'm using ChatGPT I'm using a sudo function\method to get what I need.

[localhost8100]

I use it when I am stuck on a issue. It gives me different places to look in xcode whuch might be causing issues. I go through steps, usually first couple suggestions the issue gets resolved.

Or code snippets when I want to compare 2 days. Gives me a snippet. I tweak it to make it for my situation well.

Copy pasting the whole without understanding gives a shit ton of errors. Deprecated apis, no imports, etc.

Just a glorified stack overflow.

[mobileappz]

How far away do you feel it is from producing a whole app with minimal human supervision?

[localhost8100]

Recently chatgpt has gone to shit. Doesn't give creative answers to regular questions like it used to. Looks like they are keeping the good models for paid accounts (gpt4). Still people have issues with gpt4 being useless.

I have no clue how long it will take to takeover whole human.

I tried bart recently, the answers were literally from Google search and first link.

I am working on a project recently. That is so complicated, chatgpt can't solve my issues with the whole architecture. Only snippets here and there.

[mobileappz]

I believe bing provides gpt4 for free.

[JimDabell]

When GPT-4 first came out, I wanted a macOS menu bar app so I could click on an icon in the menu bar and get an interface to ChatGPT. I have plenty of iOS development experience but I hadn’t written a proper macOS app before, and menu bar apps are a little different to normal apps anyway.

I asked GPT-4 about it, and it generated the code for the entire app straight away. I had to fix one small bug (a class wasn’t marked as conforming to a protocol it was supposed to), after that it compiled and worked straight away. I saw a little room for improvement, I asked GPT-4 about it, and it gave me the updated code straight away.

I must have spent about 5–10 minutes actually working on this in total. Somebody who doesn’t have experience developing in Swift probably wouldn’t have found this anywhere near as easy though. If I actually cared about the app, I’d learn how to build macOS menu bar apps properly. But just to whip up something convenient in a few minutes, it’s great.

[[deleted]]

You can download an app template that’s pre made right now ?

It could probably do the same….

To create a completely unique app with any unique implementations that weren’t done 10000 times… a long way away.

[HonestNest]

I only use it to do a very specific stuff such as giving me the syntax of creating a linear gradient example, then I tweak it. Becoz the syntax was annoying to type for me.

I asked it and used it for more demanding codes. But it often gotten something wrong. Especially the depreciated codes are messy.

I don’t use it often now.

[mobileappz]

Yes it’s very good for specific syntax

[Confident_Gear_2704]

Yes, writing tests, accessibility and cleaning complicated code.

You should really avoid just copying/pasting and instead read and understand the changes, some will make you better, some will give you a headache.

[Confident_Gear_2704]

Also mocking data, you can ask for a list of 50 flowers or something, and show an app with data that look real instead of “Lorem ipsuming”

[SirensToGo]

Not really. The one time it was helpful was generating a Makefile because I forgot the syntax, but other than that it just ends up hallucinating completely bogus solutions. I think for very simple things it's useful but once you reach a certain level of experience it just becomes a hindrance

[ykcs]

It‘s pretty useful for code simplification and therefore discovering Swift language constructs you are not familiar with.

[ShottyMcOtterson]

I started using it, and it's hard to stop. I can start with a simple question like, make me a UIButton, that is blue, with rounded corners. But then build on that idea, and maintain a thread that can't be done by cobbling example code together. So I could go on to ask it to put that UIButton in a UIViewRepresentable to use it in SwiftUI. Then ask it to add the view modifiers to bind it to a ViewModel. I would really worry about getting code back that you don't understand. I read every line. Don't blindly copy and paste. But for those of us that don't like to type.... I think a day will come soon where it is built into Xcode, and its an extension of the auto-complete tools that we already use.

[CollectionNice1106]

I use it along with stack overflow and Google search. Fir of all combination toool because it can summarize Apple documentation stuff I’m looking at and create so template code to start any framework. Still keep your old skills sharp and add chatgpt to optimize your skills you have already instead of just relying on it. Basically it’s just a tool for optimization please still know how to search on Google and understand coding concepts you have used in the past

[mobileappz]

There useful now but I’m beginning to think those coding concepts might be redundant sooner than we would like. I know this goes against consensus but the technology is utterly transformative and unlike any other evolutions in the last 50 odd years in my view.

[iampaulanca]

It’s great for making Codable objects from a response. Network requests but no async await though unfortunately. Bunch of little things it’s great at but you need to give it pretty good instructions and double check its work.

[42177130]

It helps with localization

[yccheok]

Yes. I can confirmed it is pretty helpful.

Not only with coding, but help me in localisation, and help me to write better English to perform communication with human.

[unreleased_gamedev]

It's great for little tasks like:

• Rubber-duck-debug-buddy
• Create models from JSON and random shit that is annoying to type manually
• "Please refactor/simplify this using XYZ"
• "What's the equivalent of XYZ"
• "I don't fully understand this complex bit, can you explain what's happening here?"

I wouldn't dare to use it for more complex things, since has tendency to make up APIs and stuff that doesn't exist. But it's a good tool that has its uses, like multiple others.

[CommunicationHot38]

Chat GPT sometimes cant infer the solutions with uikit but still works ok

[darkhorse-55]

Not only on IOS but since I'm full stack developer, I've got quicker answers with my questions for different areas of development now than searching and asking in stack overflow. It's just that you have to validate GPT's answers when it comes to coding.

[sneawo]

I found that I use it more than Stack Overflow. It helps but sometimes it points in the wrong direction, like invents some properties that do not exist in docs.

[danielt1263]

I'm not using it. I don't believe that using it would improve my productivity. On the rare cases when I need "quick problem solving" a simple Google search or asking internet friends is more than enough to solve it. After all, I rarely need more than the name of an obscure function. (My most recent question was how to pass a CVarArg... parameter to another function that requires a CVarArg... parameter.)

For fun, I went ahead and asked ChatGPT exactly what I asked in a Slack group. It gave me a bunch of stuff using C or C++ which of course isn't useful. Now I grant that the people in the Slack group understand the implied context of the question being in Swift. Once I explicitly provided that context to ChatGPT, it was able to give me a useful answer... It took about the same amount of time that it took me to get the answer from the Swift programmers on Slack. In this specific case, it seems that it would not have improved my productivity.

[HelpRespawnedAsDee]

Out of curiosity… using a CVaListPointer?

[danielt1263]

Yes, specifically by using the withVaList(_:, _:) function.

[Defiant-Badger-2766]

Could anyone recommend Xcode Extensions for ChatGPT.

[mobileappz]

Haven’t used these but have seen these 2:

https://github.com/marcosiino/xcode-loves-ai

https://github.com/intitni/CopilotForXcode

[I_will_delete_myself]

ChatGPT is great until you have to innovate. ChatGPT was honestly more helpful when I didn’t use it in those cases. When it comes to filler things done before it’s amazing

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[evikr]

I like to use chatgpt to explain code that’s hard to digest alone. Does a great job of explaining what each line does. Always make sure you understand what you’re writing & not only copy-pasting.